Research
All Projects
Active and Recently Funded Projects
Understanding Displacement Pressures in San Antonio’s Eastside
2026–2027 · San Antonio for Growth on the Eastside (SAGE) · Co-PI · $100,000
Studies past and current displacement pressures on San Antonio’s Eastside, with Hatim Sharif, Kristen Brown, and Samer Desouki.
Optimizing Tree Planting in Downtown San Antonio
2026–2027 · Centro San Antonio and H-E-B Foundation · Co-PI · $50,000
Supports the Trees Everywhere program by optimizing tree planting in downtown San Antonio, with Farzad Hashemi and Fazel Khayatian.
Nueva Street Evidence-Based Redesign and Environmental Evaluation
2026–2027 · Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization via UT San Antonio Sustainability · Co-PI · $150,000
Develops and evaluates an evidence-based redesign of Nueva Street, with Lani May, Farzad Hashemi, Fazel Khayatian, and Arslan Halper.
Co-created Digital Twins for Heat-Resilient Home Rehabilitation
2025–2026 · National Science Foundation · Co-PI · $700,000
Advances co-created digital twins for heat-resilient home rehabilitation and integrated indoor–outdoor mitigation design, with Wei Zhai, Farzad Hashemi, Neil Debbage, and Araceli Martinez Ortiz.
Urban Digital Twins with Responsible Foundation AI for Community Resilience
2025–2027 · National Science Foundation · Co-PI · $1,000,000
An NSF Excellence in Research project implementing urban digital twins and responsible foundation AI for community resilience, led with Prairie View A&M University. UTSA’s subaward is $250,000.
Environmental Metrics of Mitigation Efforts (EMME)
2024–2026 · City of San Antonio Office of Sustainability · PI · $375,000
Evaluates sensor-based air temperature and air quality in relation to urban heat-island mitigation measures, with Kristen Brown, Neil Debagge, Wei Zhai, and Farzad Hashemi.
Measuring Atmospheric Variability to Manage Heat and Air Quality
2025 · National Science Foundation CIVIC-PG · Co-PI · $74,573
Develops community-relevant methods for measuring atmospheric variability and managing intra-urban heat and air quality, led by Kristen Brown.
Optimize EV Charging Infrastructure for Grid Management
2023–2025 · CPS Energy · Co-PI · $500,000
Research with Kristen Brown supporting electric-vehicle charging infrastructure and grid-management planning in San Antonio.
Understanding Residential Mobility Patterns in the United States
2024–2026 · NALCAB · PI · $32,500
Procures and studies a national residential-mobility dataset to improve understanding of household moves and neighborhood change across the United States.
Explorations in Radical Retrofitting
2024 · SOM Foundation · Co-PI · $40,000
Examines whether declining commercial strips can contribute to solutions for San Antonio’s housing crisis, with Ian Caine.
Continuing and Earlier Projects
Ethical Urban Digital Twins for Heat Mitigation — Planning Phase
2025 · National Science Foundation CIVIC-PG · Co-PI · $75,000
The planning phase that developed an ethical urban digital twin for co-designing heat mitigations across indoor and outdoor environments, led by Wei Zhai.
Street View Sensing
2024 · Research Methods · Housing
Together with Dr. Zhai and Ph.D. student Haoming Qin, we are collecting high-resolution Street View images to better understand and refine our previous models for housing demolition perception and housing quality overall.
Predicting Demolition Orders
2023 · Research Methods · Housing
Together with Dr. Zhai, we use AI methods to combine demolition records with Street View images to predict demolition orders. We hope this will help prevent future demolitions by targeting help to households predicted to receive an order, as well as assess potential housing-quality bias during code enforcement.
Big Data Gentrification Index
2023 · Research Methods · Housing
We created a gentrification index from household-level residential mobility records from Data Axle. This improves on traditional metrics that use proxies by tracking residents replaced by higher-income households paying higher prices for the same dwelling.
Heat Islands Identification & Prioritization
2023 · Applied Research · Environmental · San Antonio · City of San Antonio
Commissioned by the City of San Antonio, HOUSED Lab works with UTSA researchers from the SPUR and CURPR centers to provide the Office of Sustainability a ranking of the city’s hottest areas for future heat-management and mitigation strategies.
Neighborhood Change Index
2023 · Applied Research · Housing · United States · NALCAB
Sponsored by the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB), HOUSED Lab and CURPR are developed a new index to track neighborhood-change in communities across the US.
Cool Pavement Evaluation — Phase 2
2024 · Applied Research · Environmental · San Antonio · City of San Antonio
Commissioned by the City of San Antonio, HOUSED Lab is working with researchers from UTSA Geography, SPUR, and CURPR to evaluate cool-pavement coatings placed throughout San Antonio.
Westside Housing Physical Condition Assessment
2023 · Applied Research · Housing · San Antonio · Westside
HOUSED Lab is collaborating with Dr. Angela Lombardi, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, and the Westside Historic Neighborhood Association to assess the physical condition of properties predicted to receive demolition orders.
Bexar County Eviction Dashboard
2023 · Applied Research · Housing · Bexar County
HOUSED Lab is collaborating with Texas Housers to create a dashboard showcasing Bexar County eviction records from 2018–2022.